iranwire.com – Six days after the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, officials’ conflicting and sometimes outlandish accounts of the incident demonstrates their hopeless befuddlement. In his short message following the assassination, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei made no mention of either the United States or Israel and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said intelligence services knew beforehand that …

iranwire.com – Just over a year ago, in November 2019, anti-government protests took place in cities and towns across Iran. Iran’s Interior Minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, disparaged the numbers on state television. “Overall between 150,000 and 200,000people took part in the protests,” he said. “The population of Iran is more than 82 million.  Clearly, the protesters don’t represent the nation.” (Incidentally, we STILL don’t know …

iranwire.com – The morning of Wednesday, December 2 broke with the news that distribution of a new shipment of flu vaccine to government-picked pharmacies across Iran had begun. Heydar Mohammadi, director-general of the Food and Drug Administration’s Drugs and Controlled Substances Department, announced that the newly imported flu vaccine will cost consumers 192,000 tomans ($47) per dose. It will only be available …

RFL/RE – The United States is partially withdrawing some staff from its embassy in Baghdad as tensions with Iran and Iraqi militia groups spike.U.S. Ambassador Mathew Tueller confirmed on December 3 a “temporary reduction” in staff at the mission following recent media reports of the change.In a video posted on the U.S. Embassy’s Facebook page, Tueller said he and a …

RFL/RE – Israel’s government is warning that Israeli targets abroad could come under attack by Iran, citing threats issued by Tehran following the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last week. “In light of threats recently coming from Iranian officials and in light of the involvement in the past of Iranian agents in terror attacks in various countries, there …

Iran Human Rights (IHR)- Human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh has been returned to prison on the judiciary’s orders despite the state medical examiner’s advice that she is still contagious after contracting COVID-19 and would require another two weeks for treatment. Before returning to prison, Nasrin called the public’s attention to the imminent execution of Ahmadreza Djalali. According to Iran Human …

gatestoneinstitute.org – There is no gloating about death, but the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh…. was not the scientist who discovered the anti-coronavirus vaccine, but the scientist called the father of the Iranian nuclear bomb…” — Tareq Al-Hameed, Saudi author, Okaz, November 30, 2020. “[H]ow can they condemn the killing of a man who devoted his life to making a sinister bomb …

A leading human rights group said Thursday that an Iranian-Swedish scientist’s execution has been halted — at least for now. Ahmadreza Djalali’s planned execution is on hold for the “next few days,” a spokeswoman for Amnesty International told Al-Monitor. Djalali, an emergency medicine specialist, was arrested in Iran in 2016. He was charged with espionage, and later sentenced to death on the …

Al-Arabia – Iran on Thursday surpassed one million confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection, the health ministry said in the Middle East country hardest hit by the pandemic. The Islamic republic has recorded 1,003,494 coronavirus infections since announcing its first cases in February, ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on state television. For more on coronavirus, visit our dedicated section. The …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Iran’s mullahs love the nuclear deal because of its fundamental flaws, especially the sunset clauses that remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal expires soon. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state. With the …